


Jeong Yunho: Fanfic Connoisseur

by AERCHIVE (aerClassic)



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: M/M, extremely meta, non-au, yunho pokes fun at popular ships don't take it personal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:20:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25288963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aerClassic/pseuds/AERCHIVE
Summary: “Why would I join an airline?” Still trying to adjust the microphone at just the right height that Yunho won't have to bend down to sing, Hongjoong pauses long enough to give him an odd squinting glance over the rim of his glasses. “What kind of question is that?”“Nothing, nevermind,” Yunho backpedals, already feeling the hot creep of mortification over the tip of his ears. “Forget I said anything.”In which Yunho discovers fanfiction. It's fine until it isn't.
Relationships: Jeong Yunho/Kim Hongjoong
Comments: 26
Kudos: 291





	Jeong Yunho: Fanfic Connoisseur

**Author's Note:**

> y'all know what i'm about by now [finger guns]

Saturday night, the requisite Family Togetherness™ gatherings that Hongjoong insists on to facilitate dorm harmony, Yunho has Yeosang and Mingi’s feet thrown over his lap on the couch as they watch episode after episode of One Piece without really taking it in. Hongjoong and Seonghwa are spread out on the floor, nearly nose to nose over a book of word searches with different colored pens trying to see who can find the most hidden words before the end credits. San is out cold, as is Jongho, both curled into each other like sleepy kittens against the sectional ottoman while Wooyoung carefully traces whiskers across their cheeks with eyeliner.

“Jongho is going to murder you when he wakes up you know,” Yunho whispers under the sound of Luffy yelling nonsense. “Like, full on suplex you into the floor.”

Wooyoung only shrugs, still balancing precariously on his tiptoes for the best angle to draw the slight curve of a cat’s mouth. “It’s fine, I can outrun him.”

“Not if I trip you,” Hongjoong says. He punctuates the statement by swaying one leg in the air like a threat. 

Wooyoung glances back and snorts. “Pretty sure I could dodge your puny legs, too, hyung.”

Yunho watches Hongjoong’s eyes narrow and holds back a laugh. “Well you won’t be able to dodge Seonghwa or Yunho’s. You guys have my back, right?”

“Yeah!” Seonghwa rolls into Hongjoong’s chest and coos, “Matz forever.”

“My legs are the bread and butter of this group, I’m not risking them for your short man pride,” Yunho grumbles. He’s not jealous. _He’s not._ “Also you two are gross.”

Hongjoong throws his pen with deadly accuracy at the center of Yunho’s forehead and he whines at the sudden sting of it. It’s loud enough that Jongho stirs on the couch and Wooyoung vaults himself halfway across the room before he can be caught. San continues to drool.

“Serves you right,” Hongjoong hisses. “Also calling us gross is rich coming from the guy who reads fanfiction about himself.”

Hongjoong says it as if he doesn’t know Wooyoung begs Yunho for links to quality WooSan content literally every other week. 

Yunho had started the odd practice after running into a twitter discussion about fanfiction, centered around their group specifically, and found himself scrolling through pages and pages of content out of morbid curiosity. It was fun to read excerpts of the less explicit imagines out loud when they were together like this just to watch Jongho’s face twist in on itself out of hatred. The members had even made it a regular thing, had named the short five minute sitdowns as Yunho’s Reading Corner, and clustered around him for the worst, gooey-est descriptions of lovestruck ardor until the novelty wore off and it got _—_ weird. Seonghwa had thrown a mock fit the first time Yunho read off a short little snippet of Hongjoong and Mingi holding hands over ice cream and called Hongjoong a homewrecker.

Everyone collectively agreed to leave the fanfiction reading to the fans, but Yunho still liked to check in on his favorites here and there. Weekly. Alright, daily. Sometimes hourly if it was a slow day in the dance hall.

“I’m not reading about myself this time, thank you very much.” Yunho haughtily lifts his nose in the air. “Someone posted an interesting Seongjoong that seems cool.”

Jongho lifts his head, squinting blearily at the rest of the room, and slurs, “What’d I miss?”

“What’s a Seongjoong?” Mingi asks.

Yeosang stuffs a pillow over his face to hide his laughter when Jongho mimes gagging and adds a throaty, “So nothing of value, awesome,” before dropping back to sleep on San’s chest.

Yunho watches Seonghwa and Hongjoong roll around on the floor with their arms wrapped around the other and suddenly wishes he didn’t know what it was either. “It’s the ship name for Seonghwa-hyung and Hong-hyung over there.”

Seonghwa apparently thinks that’s adorable and starts trying to mash his mouth on Hongjoong’s cheeks, because Yunho knows from experience that Seonghwa works on exactly two extremes: adoring, reliable hyung or a feral little goblin child with no concept of personal space.

Hongjoong groans, kicking Seonghwa away before he can get handsy. “Please stop. What exactly are you gaining from reading about us doing _—_ whatever it is we get up to in fic?”

“You don’t get up to anything in this other than adventure.” Yunho clears his throat. “It’s rated E for everyone, so.”

Hongjoong doesn't look convinced. Yeosang, who knows _exactly_ what the giant E at the top of the page stands for, snorts harder next to him and Yunho elbows him hard in the side to make him shut up. 

“I just think it’s cool what our fanbase creates for us,” Yunho blithely continues. “Aren’t you proud you inspire people to write miniature novels about us?”

“Maybe we should have a writing contest for Atiny,” Yeosang suggests once he’s gotten himself under control, a sly grin in place.

“What,” Yunho creaks out.

“That might not be a bad idea,” Hongjoong says thoughtfully, one hand on his chin and the other over Seonghwa’s face to keep him quiet.

Yunho gapes, “No _—_ ”

“I’ll bring it up to management the next time we have a formal meeting,” Hongjoong says brightly. “Thanks for the inspiration, Yunho.”

Yeosang and Wooyoung both start snickering loud, the little assholes, and Yunho can do nothing but flap his mouth open and closed until he can scrape out a garbled, “You’re welcome?”

**\----------------**

Reading fic is all fine and good until Yunho forgets to keep their fans’ imaginations from blurring into the real world while he’s standing in the middle of a recording session waiting for Hongjoong to stop fiddling with the stupid mic stand. It’s just _—_ Hongjoong fresh from the stylist chair with his shiny new blonde head looks so good, and seeing him bent low almost to Yunho’s waist makes the feral monkey-brain part of himself jump front and center, and Yunho blurts, “Have you ever thought about joining an airline?”[*](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1410142)

“Why would I join an airline?” Still trying to adjust the microphone at just the right height that Yunho won't have to bend down to sing, Hongjoong pauses long enough to give him an odd squinting glance over the rim of his glasses. “What kind of question is that?”

“Nothing, nevermind,” Yunho backpedals, already feeling the hot creep of mortification over the tip of his ears. “Forget I said anything.”

Hongjoong continues to squint so Yunho’s blood pressure continues to spike in self-defense. “Is this about fanfic again? Are you _still_ reading that garbage?”

“It’s not garbage,” Yunho mutters defensively, “A lot of them are really cool and well written and it’s fun to imagine us being, like, vampires and shit.”

“Okay, but I don’t think vampires have anything to do with an airline.” Hongjoong props his chin on his fist and grins, sharp and kind of pissed. “Tell me about it.”

Fuck. Yunho’s cheeks blaze hotter than the approximate temperature of a dying star. That particular story had been _filthy_ and just imagining trying to tell one of his best friends that he read about the two of them bumping uglies at least six times in one story is a bit _—_ he’d rather take a flying leap from the nearest window and spray the 7/11 display windows downstairs with his own viscera. 

“Would you believe me if I said it had to do with the vampires from earlier?” Yunho tries. 

“Somehow I highly doubt it, but you’re welcome to try.” Hongjoong taps one of Yunho’s pockets _—_ again, way too close to certain events that Yunho experiences a form of illicit deja-vu. “Pull it up on your phone so I can read whatever it is. Maybe it’ll convince me to look at a new career path.”

Yunho grabs desperately at the microphone. “Can we please just focus on music instead? I don’t think I can physically handle watching you read porn right now.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. It is absolutely, 1000% the worst possible jumble of words to flop out of his stupid running mouth in the whole of his twenty-one years on this godforsaken Earth, because Hongjoong’s grin fades, and then comes rearing back with a muscle jumping in his cheek. “So you’ve upgraded to reading porn about the group? That’s a bit weird, Yunho-yah.”

Yunho has a single vindictive thought about pulling up that one story with the fucking _moose_[*](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22264096) just to see how red Hongjoong’s cheeks could get when he gets to the _—_ very complimentary _—_ description of Yunho's cock. But then Yunho would have to watch him read about getting fucked incoherent and ending covered in cum, and while, you know, hot, it mostly makes his innards curdle with something not unlike guilt. Maybe another time, in a different _universe_ where Yunho is not ass over tits in extreme like with Kim Hongjoong, who _should_ be nothing more than a working extension of his family.

“What’s weird is you calling me up here to record instead of Jongho or Wooyoung.” Yunho frowns and tells himself it is not at all because he’s jealous. “Or Mingi.”

“Mingi’s already spent like twelve hours in here spitballing rap lines for the next comeback.” Hongjoong purses his lips, flicking at the screw to tighten the mic stand at its final height. “And anyway I already said I wanted _you_.”

 _Don’t make it weird, don’t make it weird,_ Yunho internally chants to himself, nervous sweat beginning to bead on his hairline and his upper lip, and bounces on the very tips of his feet to compensate for the slew of Bad Thoughts trying to make camp in his brain. Hongjoong smiles, blinding white, and he’s so gorgeous that Yunho suffers a momentary brain aneurysm that manifests as a singular _oh shit_ barely slipping through the gaps of his teeth.

Hongjoong hums agreement, clearly amused. “And when we’re done we can go over what it is you’ve been reading lately.”

“How about I treat you to a nice steak dinner instead,” Yunho coos, high pitched and squeaky in his best aegyo while forming a heart over his head with his arms. “Let your favorite person treat you to a fancy meal!”

“My favorite person is my mom and she sends me enough money for food, thanks,” Hongjoong laughs.

“Second favorite, then.”

“Eden-sunbaenim.”

Yunho glares. “Why are you so difficult?”

“Dunno.” Hongjoong queues up an instrumental track that begins playing softly throughout the little studio. “Why are you reading porn about yourself and your friends?”

... _Touche._

**\----------------**

Hongjoong has just the tiniest smudge of ketchup on the corner of his mouth. Yunho chews his own food without tasting it because he’s so distracted by the flex of Hongjoong’s mouth, the little flicker of pink tongue that pokes out when he licks the sauce away. Maybe it really is a byproduct of reading way too many fanfics and not spending enough time watching porn like a normal hormonal boy, but just the barest wet glimpse of Hongjoong’s tongue sliding through the seam of his mouth to catch the grease from his burger has Yunho’s pulse skyrocketing.

Hongjoong delicately dabs at his mouth and leans over his plate. “So.”

Yunho swallows hard. “So.”

“Who gets paired up the most?”

There’s a bus stop right outside the little diner they’d managed to squeeze into just before closing. Yunho sends it a longing glance wishing he could run out and escape this city and this conversation on the last ride out. “Why do you want to know?”

“Because I’m an idol and I want to know what our fans are thinking.” Hongjoong leans back in his seat chewing thoughtfully on a fry. “Maybe we could use it to our advantage and play up the fanservice.”

That...actually sounds reasonable. “It’s you and Seonghwa.”

Hongjoong pauses mid-chew. “Wait, really?”

“As if you didn’t know,” Yunho accuses, flicking a wilted piece of lettuce at Hongjoong’s head. “It’s like a competition between you two and Wooyoung and San of who has the most rabid fanbase. I think me and Mingi run a close third.”

“Really,” Hongjoong says, though he doesn’t sound very happy about it, but that could just as easily be attributed to the limp green stuck to his neck than anything else. “So, aside from Seonghwa, who do I get paired up with the most?”

That makes Yunho pause. The last time he’d checked, which he is honest enough with himself to admit is _often_ , the number of pairings with Hongjoong in the mix in the top ten had been with _—_

“Me,” Yunho croaks. “It’s _—_ uh _—_ it’s me. A-and Mingi, too. Kinda.”

Hongjoong eyes him from across the table much like an enemy combatant would size another up for war. Yunho has played enough fighting games to know that look and wonders vaguely if this is going to end in all the tables getting thrown across the restaurant and, like, zombies crawling through the broken glass windows. It would be badass if a dude with a machete for an arm would clomp through the doorway and start knifing zombified patrons in the neck. 

“You and me, huh?”

More than anything a dude with a machete arm would be a merciful end to this horrible conversation. “Yeah,” Yunho tries for casual. “M-me and you. But we’re not, um, we’re not that popular as a pairing, I don’t think, just going by the numbers.”

Hongjoong eats another fry. Yunho stuffs half his remaining burger in his mouth in the hopes he might choke and die before Hongjoong asks him another question.

He doesn’t.

“So what’s our ship name?” Hongjoong bops their shoes together gently beneath the table. “You said me and hyung are Seongjoong instead of Matz, but what are you and I?” Hongjoong leans back in his chair, balancing on the back prongs in a way that sends Yunho’s overprotective instinct into overdrive. “Yunjoong?”

“Sometimes.” Yunho pulls Hongjoong’s feet towards himself to make his hyung stop trying to give him palpitations over potential head trauma when his chair falls out from under him. “Most of the time we’re Hohong though.”

“Oh like _—_ ” Hongjoong mimes hitting the woah. “Ho-hong-ya?”

“Exactly that,” Yunho tells him. “Weird, huh?”

Hongjoong doesn’t say anything for a long time, invested as he is in the secret consumption of empty calories they’ll both answer for later at the next weigh-in. But his face scrunches thoughtfully, until Hongjoong slides the rest of his fries to Yunho’s plate with a soft, “I don’t think it’s weird. It’s kinda sweet.”

**\----------------**

Over the next two months, Hongjoong makes it a point to avoid doing their signature move in any of their uploaded content. Yunho doesn't know if it's because he's uncomfortable with how their fans have run with the concept or if he's just bored of playing it up on camera. Either way, Yunho feels crushed by the sudden refusal to indulge their fanbase and it _hurts_. Seeing a manager come up to them with the camera already rolling and Hongjoong ignoring the chance to throw their hands up together like old times makes Yunho's throat close up and his smile falter.

Maybe he shouldn't have said anything.

Hongjoong passes him in the hallway one morning two weeks later with a hunted expression on his face. His hair is all bunched up on one side and Yunho catches him by the sleeve so he can smooth his hands over the worst of the cowlick. 

"You look like someone who rolled down the side of a hill," Yunho says fondly while patting at the wild wreck of hair. Hongjoong blinks slow and out of sync, exhaustion clear in the slump of his shoulders and the way he's leaning into Yunho's chest like it's the only thing keeping him upright. "Did you even sleep last night?"

"I think, maybe, dunno." Yunho can feel Hongjoong's hands slide into the front pocket of his hoodie to help keep himself steady. "I, uh, I found that...I found that thing you mentioned."

He blinks, confused. That last time they'd talked it was about needing toilet paper, somehow Yunho doubts Hongjoong went out to buy industrial sized packs of TP in the middle of the night. "What thing?"

Hongjoong's nose scrunches. "The _—_ the story. The one about the airline."

Oh.

Oh hell.

"I never said you needed to go _looking for it_ ," Yunho says and prides himself on the fact his voice is steady, though he loses points for the hot gurgle of shame starting to swirl in his stomach. " _Why_?"

Hongjoong buries his face in Yunho's chest. "I was curious, so I went looking for that site you like to torture us with and _—_ " He pauses to swallow. Yunho wishes the ground would open up and swallow him whole while they were at it. "And, uh, anyway. There was more explicit content than I think I was mentally prepared for."

Yunho gapes open mouthed for a moment until he settles on, "Our fans are very inventive."

"Mmm."

They stand at an impasse for what feels like a small eternity, Hongjoong with his face buried in Yunho's chest and Yunho glancing around hoping someone else will wake up and interrupt the weird stifling atmosphere. He touches the side of Hongjoong's neck, and his hyung backs up as if he'd been burned.

"I _—_ " Hongjoong is wide eyed and flushed pink up to his hairline. "I'm _—_ I'm going to go shower."

"Right."

"Okay." Hongjoong opens his mouth as if he's going to say something else before his jaw clicks shut and he spins on his heel. Yunho watches him go _—_ watches Hongjoong metaphorically run screaming in the opposite direction _—_ feeling helpless.

_Fuck._

**\----------------**

After the odd interaction in the hallway, Yunho swears he's going to stop reading fanfiction. Jongho seems to be the most relieved by the absence of Yunho's Reading Corner updates on Saturday nights and being made to sit through snippets of meet-cutes with Mingi, who he threatens with extreme violence on the regular. Though Hongjoong still acts squirrelly when it's just the two of them left alone, either in the dorm or the stylist chairs or sharing an elevator ride. 

The moratorium on the fanfiction consumption lasts for a month before he's dragged back in.

Yunho spends the cooldown from a session in the dance hall trying to play a side shooter on his phone one-handed thanks to Mingi draped lazily over his left side keeping his arm pinned down. He’s just about to give up on the futile effort when his phone pings with a new alert letting him know one of the stories he’d been reading before all the _—_ _before_ finally updated, and it was finally _complete_. Yunho strives for casual when he thumbs open the link, but something must give him away because Mingi kicks gently at his kneecap. 

“What was that?”

Yunho rolls his lips between his teeth and shifts his phone closer to his nose. “Nothing, don’t worry about it.”

Mingi drops it for all of thirty seconds _—_ just enough for Yunho to slowly translate the first two sentences in his head _—_ before he’s jumping up and snatching Yunho’s phone away. “Doesn’t seem like nothing, lemme see!”

“Mingi!” Yunho throws himself after his friend to drag the device back. “Give that back!”

"' _While he waits on the sidewalk for his ride to arrive, Hongjoong makes one more—last—phone call,_[*](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21341035?view_full_work=true)" Mingi reads off in an incredulous tone. "What happened to not reading fanfiction anymore? What is this?"

"It's _nothing_ , like I said, just leave it alone." Yunho stops trying to grab his phone back and pouts. "Let me have this one thing."

Mingi keeps scrolling through the chapter. Yunho briefly wonders if he's going to have to plug his ears in case Mingi reads out a spoiler just to be a dick. "This another you and hyung story?"

What he _should_ do is lie. He should shrug this off and say, no, of course not! Wish fulfillment is for chumps!

Too bad he's nothing if not honest. Yunho starfishes out on the floor. "Yeah. Yeah, it is."

"You ever going to do anything about your crush on him?"

"Probably not," Yunho sighs. "I'm almost eighty to ninety percent positive it wouldn't go anywhere good if I said something."

Mingi gives him a look that suggests he thinks Yunho is a moron, which, yeah, fair. “Look, I was trying to stay out of this and watch you make a fool of yourself, but how many times is it going to take for Hongjoong to accidentally call you _his_ before it gets through your thick skull? He likes you. You like him. Stop reading fanfic and go _do_ something about it.”

Mingi would have a good point if Hongjoong didn’t refer to everyone in the group as _his_ because he’s possessive over the people he loves. Yunho was just as much Hongjoong’s as Mingi or the keyboard stuffed under Hongjoong’s bed.

Still, Yunho snags a little on the amount of times Hongjoong went to say something about _his Yunho_ and stumbled trying to correct it with _our_ instead: during their vlives, several times over the course of the first tour, at least once for a Youtube collaboration.

Huh. 

“Wouldn’t that be weird though? Two people from the same group actually trying to date each other...” Yunho accepts his phone from Mingi’s evil clutches by way of it smacking into his nose and glares. “I’m being serious, Mingi.”

“So am I,” his best friend says mildly. “None of us were going to say anything about your weird obsession with fanfic lately because it seemed harmless, but watching you pussyfoot around hyung is getting annoying. Either confess and tell him you want to suck face or find a way to get over him.” Mingi faceplants into Yunho’s lap and kicks his feet out like an overgrown toddler. “I love you, man, but this is a whole new level of pathetic even for you.”

“I’m not pathetic,” Yunho mutters under his breath. “What makes you think Hongjoong would even want to _—_ you know?”

Mingi rolls over and Yunho is greeted with a nasty sneering glare. “Seriously? You want a list?”

A list would be helpful actually. As would a paper with two columns of pros and cons so Yunho has a visual display of why confessing to Hongjoong would be a monumentally foolish endeavor. He keeps his mouth shut tight and picks at imaginary lint on the floor. 

Mingi rolls his eyes. “Fine. I’m going to show you something, but you have to promise to go to hyung’s studio when you finish reading it.” He holds out a pinky. “Okay?”

Yunho dubiously links their fingers together. “Promise.”

**\----------------**

Yunho walks to Hongjoong’s little hole in the wall studio space with his head in the clouds and his heart in his throat. 

Earlier, Mingi had handed over his phone with a notes app open. “I was saving these as blackmail material after you two finally got your heads out of your asses so I could embarrass hyung, but you might as well look at them now. This is pretty much everything Hongjoong has said about you when we’ve been cooped up together pulling all nighters to finish lyrics.”

He’d only thought the fans were inventive. Hongjoong apparently liked to slip in complimentary notes about Yunho’s nose or his hands or his mouth into filthy, filthy lines around the 2A.M. mark and according to Mingi it only got worse from there. Most of it was cute, like describing the way Yunho smiles in much more flowery language than Yunho would ever be capable of, but at some point the cute thoughts migrate to _—_ well.

“That’s usually the point I have to slap duct tape over his mouth,” Mingi grimaced. “There are some things I really do not want to know about either of you, no offense.”

Dating as idols wouldn’t be easy and Hongjoong would more than likely reject him on that premise alone. Yunho chews his lips waiting for the elevator at the base of the building trying to come up with convincing counter arguments. He’s made it as far as _we don’t have to put a label on it_ when Hongjoong opens the door.

“Yunho? What are you doing here?”

He looks exhausted. Yunho steps into the room despite Hongjoong's confused look and shuts the door behind himself, the click of the automatic lock loud in the awkward silence.

“I really like you,” spews out of his mouth before Yunho really has a chance to figure out what he actually wanted to say, and he claps his hands over his lips like it will somehow push the words back down his throat. Hongjoong stands frozen and blinks up at him owlishly, one hand gripping tight to the cord of his oversized headphones so hard his knuckles have gone white.

“You _—_ I really like you, too?” Hongjoong wraps the cord around and around the first knuckle of his left index finger. “We probably wouldn’t get along as a group otherwise, idiot. Again, why are you here?”

All of his muscles clench up tight with the urge to run away. Either Hongjoong is trying to play this off to save Yunho from making a fool of himself or he’s honest to god this _dense_. Maybe it’s a little of both. He’s just about to laugh it off and play along, except the image of Hongjoong flushed bright pink after admitting to reading about them together flashes across his vision and Yunho can hear San’s snarky _you look good together_ as if it’s getting played at max volume with bass boosted in his brain. 

Yunho fidgets in place when it feels like the silence has stretched on too long. “No, I mean, I _like_ you, hyung. As more than...more than friends.” When it looks like Hongjoong is about to grin and laugh off his sincerity, Yunho adds, “You know what I’m asking here, don’t sugarcoat your answer.”

Hongjoong’s cheek indents as he visibly bites down on the soft skin in his mouth. His eyes are so wide and so pretty all Yunho wants is to stand here and stare at him until he’s memorized every slice of color reflecting back at him in those irises. At least until his legs give out from the anxiety of possible rejection. “Is this because of the fanfic stuff?”

“No,” Yunho quickly denies, because it _really isn’t_ , but scuffs his shoe on the hard linoleum flooring and adds a tiny, “Not completely anyway.”

“Yunho, I’m not _—_ ” Hongjoong scrubs his hands down his face, obviously frustrated. “I’m not anything like those stories. You _know_ me, but I’m afraid you’re getting confused with the fake me you’ve been reading about for the last six months. I just want you to be sure of what you’re asking me here.”

Hongjoong has purple bags dragging beneath his eyes, sleep crusted in the corners. He’s got little zits dotted on his chin that he painstakingly removes for every photo that could maybe, possibly one day show up on their SNS. He’ll sometimes forget to shower after two days of being locked up in his little studio and shows up to practice smelling worse than the inside of Yeosang’s shoes on a hot day. He’s grouchy and mean in the mornings and takes too long in the bathroom when everyone is waiting for their turn. Hongjoong laughs too loud at his own jokes and throws mini pouting tantrums when no one laughs with him. He’s terrible at laundry and tends to shove his dirty clothes beneath his bed rather than deal with washing them when he could be working on music or slinging paint at some cut up jeans or doodling hidden expletives on his shoes.

Kim Hongjoong, the real one, is amazingly, _disgustingly_ human.

Yunho tries not to be bowled over by just how much he loves him for it.

“Trust me, I know exactly what I’m asking from you,” Yunho reassures him. Hongjoong’s fingers are so small in comparison, but they’re sturdy and hard despite their trembling when Yunho squeezes their hands together. “And I’m not trying to force an answer or make you feel obligated or anything, I just wanted you to know how I feel. We can pretend this conversation never happened and that’d be that, no hard feelings.” Yunho pauses to clear his throat. “I promise to only cry a little bit.”

“Only a little, huh?” Hongjoong stares transfixed at their entwined hands. He gulps. “You _—_ you’re really dumb.”

“Dumb?” Yunho squawks. “What the fuck? I come in here after finally having the courage to _confess_ and you call me dumb! I should be getting medals for bravery!”

Hongjoong laughs until he hiccups _—_ until he has to drop down to the ground to hide his high pitched and squeaking laughter into the curl of his knees. Yunho wants to hate him for it, but it’s cute and Hongjoong still has his hand in a vice grip so it’s not like Yunho can storm off either. 

He almost misses Hongjoong’s quiet, “This isn’t fanfic. I’m not going to put out immediately.”

“That’s fine, I’m too young to have kids anyway,” Yunho says to lighten the mood. He notes with no small amount of delight that the very tips of Hongjoong’s ears peeking up from the side of his beanie are flushed red and has to crouch down for a closer look. His heart feels as if it’s going to come bursting out of his chest like a macabre reenactment of Alien. “Um. Does that mean you…”

Hongjoong shivers. He keeps his head down but his fingers flex and tighten against Yunho’s knuckles in tiny little spasms. “You remember when we were traveling _—_ ”

“Where?”

“Anywhere,” Hongjoong says tightly. “God, this is so pathetic, but you remember how we always pushed our beds together? I said it was so you’d have more room to spread out because you’re always hanging off the side of your bunk at home, but I really just wanted to be close to you.” Hongjoong laughs again, still buried in his arms, and Yunho’s heart continues to trip over itself in his chest. “You cuddle up with San or Wooyoung or Mingi, hell almost anyone else, all the time, but you don’t really _—_ _we_ don’t really do that and it was nice to _—_ to pretend for a few hours every night that we _could_ and that you’d _want to_.”

“I want to,” Yunho says breathlessly. “Hyung, I want to _all the time_.” 

He wants to hold him right now, if only Hongjoong would look up. He wants to trace the slope of Hongjoong’s nose and get close enough to count each and every one of his eyelashes. Yunho wants to push Hongjoong down on the little couch in his studio and roll him up in a blanket to nap, because he needs it _—_ because Hongjoong’s eyebags have eyebags, and Yunho has woken up so many times when they shared a room to fondly watch Hongjoong drool all over his pillow that he desperately wants to see it again to make sure the novelty hand't worn off. He wants to hold Hongjoong's hands; he wants to kiss the dry cracked skin of his knuckles for so long that Hongjoong yells at him to stop, and then he wants to keep doing it until Hongjoong gets fed up with him and leaves.

He wants so many things all at once that Yunho's head spins with the dizzying possibilities of the future.

“Okay.” Hongjoong’s breath hitches again. “Okay. I didn’t _—_ I didn’t know that.”

“Well. Now you do.” Yunho allows himself to lean forward just enough he can connect their foreheads together, kind of. It ends with him balancing on the tips of his toes crushing Hongjoong’s beanie with his eyebrows but it works. “Hongjoong?”

His hyung shivers again, his whole body trembling now. “ _What_?”

“I really, really like you,” Yunho confesses again, quiet enough that he thinks the sound doesn’t escape the tiny slice of space between them. “How do you feel about me?”

Hongjoong finally looks up. His cheeks are blotchy, tears clumping his eyelashes together, and his nose is starting to run. He’s the most gorgeous creature on the planet, even when he scrapes the sleeve over his free hand through the mess beneath his nostrils. Yunho _loves_ him. 

“I like you a lot, too.” Hongjoong’s shoulders droop. “But I don’t know what we do from here. I don’t know what we _can_ do.”

Yunho has several ideas.

Yunho has so many ideas it’s going to take a lifetime before he’s anywhere close to being done with the list. 

He tugs Hongjoong up from their awkward crouch on the floor and pulls him toward the cramped little couch against the far wall. 

“How about this: we take a nap.” Hongjoong goes willingly to the edge when Yunho pushes on his shoulders and doesn’t even make a fuss when Yunho throws his slippers across the room. “And when we wake up, we’ll do everything we’ve been doing. Maybe we’ll hold hands sometimes. We’ll probably fight because you’re a workaholic and I spend too much time in the dance hall. At some point I’m going to reintroduce myself to your family, you’re going to meet my brother, my dad is going to grill you for your intentions and my mom is going to embarrass me by showing you the shelf full of minions I keep in my room because they remind me of you.” 

Hongjoong is staring up at him with wet eyes, his breathing erratic. “And then?”

Yunho grins at him extremely pleased with himself. “And then at some point I’m going to kiss you, and you’re going to kiss me, and we’re going to put up with our friends being smug assholes about it for _years_.”

“Years, huh?” Hongjoong covers his face again to laugh. “Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out.”

Yunho squeezes in next to him on the couch and flops back with Hongjoong’s head cradled against his neck. He wedges his arms behind Hongjoong’s hips so he can lock his hands together over Hongjoong’s waist to keep him from squirming away in his sleep. “I’ve had a lot of time to daydream.”

“Clearly.”

Yunho hooks their ankles together. “This really isn’t about the fanfic, hyung. I like you.”

“I like you too.” Hongjoong’s words slur a little at the end, already beginning to drift towards sleep. “Hey, Yunho?”

He hides a smile against Hongjoong’s beanie. He might be crying, just a little, but it’s a good cry and Hongjoong has been covered in worse things than tears. “Yeah?”

Hongjoong starts to giggle helplessly, “I might actually put out after the third date.”

Spit goes down the wrong way and Yunho chokes. Hongjoong thinks it’s the most hilarious thing he’s ever heard and cackles so loud he’s hiccuping again, voice going pitchy until it disappears entirely to breathless noise.

“I hate you,” Yunho says plaintively once he can make words again. “You’re _evil_.”

Hongjoong finally calms down and yawns. “And you’re a bad liar.”

He glances down at Hongjoong’s hand splayed out on his chest, forefinger absentmindedly drawing a heart over the steady thumping in Yunho’s breast. God. Yunho catches those dainty digits and threads their palms together until he can feel the rabbit-fast thrum of Hongjoong’s heart skipping just as many beats as his own. Yunho secrets a tiny kiss against the crown of Hongjoong’s head.

“Go to sleep.”

**\----------------**

Saturday night he’s got Yeosang’s feet in his lap and Hongjoong’s head on his shoulder when his boyfriend decides to shatter the lazy atmosphere in the dorm with a loud but casual, “So, should I see if Korean Air has any uniforms for sale?”

Yunho makes a brainless strangled noise in his throat as all the blood in his body rushes to his cheeks and _—_ _elsewhere_.

A lot of things happen at once: Seonghwa and Mingi both groan and mime vomiting. San, Wooyoung, and Yeosang all throw various objects at Hongjoong’s head, Wooyoung’s new Apple pencil among them. Jongho actually gets up and holds the oversized ottoman over his head with a roaring, “We’re not doing this again! I refuse!”

“You’re the literal devil,” Yunho whispers when the commotion dies down and they’ve all settled back to watch a movie. Jongho is still sending them both flinty-eyed looks that promise pain if Hongjoong so much as breathes wrong. 

Hongjoong just smiles up at him smugly, day old greasy hair peeking from beneath the hood of his sweatshirt cinched tight up under his chin because this isn't a fic and Hongjoong isn't perfect. He's got a smudge of barbecue sauce from dinner on his hoodie and a collection of pimples dotted here and there across his cheeks.

“You like me anyway.”

Yunho accepts Hongjoong’s weight when he settles back in his lap as if Yunho is a particularly comfortable piece of furniture, allows Hongjoong to pull his arms around his waist so he can play with Yunho’s fingers, and thinks…

Yeah.

He really does.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> no one:  
> literally no one:  
> me: have you consumed sam's moose!fic lately? [Flora & Fauna - by ScarlettSiren](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22264096)  
> \- Ash


End file.
